Emerging in the post-war United Kingdom, the Brutalist movement was initially viewed with suspicion. But in recent years, it has undergone a revival, with a new generation of designers being attracted to the tension between the aggressive geometric forms and the raw, exposed materials that define the style. From its genesis in Britain, Brutalism spread across Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa, forming regionally distinct interpretations shaped by local cultures and socio-economic contexts. This article discusses Italy’s specific contribution to the movement in terms of the photographic work of Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego. Their photography led to the book Brutalist Italy: Concrete Architecture from the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea, a comprehensive photographic essay on the subject.
In the aftermath of World War II, Europe sought a different identity for architecture—one less founded upon technological optimism and more focused on reshaping the social role of architecture. As a reaction to a war-ravaged urban landscape, the post-war movement attempted to take design even further away from political ideology, embracing a socially conscious ethos. This ideological change advocated smaller-scaled, functional buildings, a paucity of ornament, and a reliance upon honest, expressed materials.
For all their austerity, Brutalist architects never relinquished their responsibility to form. As critic Reyner Banham noted, they still felt a « form-giving obligation. » In its early years, Brutalism was dismissed as ‘anti-art’ or ‘anti-beauty’ for its rejection of the shiny aesthetic norms of the time. But the movement had a strange abstract force—the ability of architectural form to stir through mere presence.
It is this aggressive attitude that distinguishes Brutalism from other strands of modern architecture—Banham’s « je-m’en-foutisme, its bloody-mindedness » in his seminal 1955 essay The New Brutalism. Within Europe, Italy also had its own specific interpretation, blending Brutalism’s functional austerity with cultural sensitivities that softened some of the more brutal tones found elsewhere in Europe.
One of the hallmarks of Brutalism is that it insists a building should appear to be made of what it is made of. While most modernist buildings hid their materials behind plaster or glazing, Brutalism gloried in the raw expression of steel, concrete, and brick, confirming the interdependence of material, form, structure, and function.
Italian architects and engineers in the early post-war decades reached the extremes of structural form. Sergio Musmeci, for instance, explored the potential of thin-shell concrete membranes shaped in reaction to the physical stresses they were intended to withstand. He used experimental techniques—such as soap film stretched over wire frames—to explore natural geometry, decades before computer modeling became a possibility, in a similar way to Frei Otto. He then created micro-concrete models to test new forms. His Musmeci Bridge is an example: its underside is a continuous, undulating concrete membrane, about 40 centimeters thick, that arches and flows beneath the roadway, supported by finger-like piers.
It is this expressive use of geometry that is one of the reasons why Brutalist architecture resonates with the design of sacred spaces. From the 1950s, the Catholic Church in Italy—struggling to find relevance in the modern world—adopted the rough spiritual potential of Brutalism. The formal and material economy of the style made it particularly apt for the design of contemplative, awe-inducing interior spaces. The Church of Jesus the Redeemer in Turin by Nicola Mosso, Leonardo Mosso, and Livio Norzi demonstrates how concrete and brick, plain materials, can be transformed through proportion and light into spiritually suggestive architecture.
Other Brutalist religious buildings, such as the National Temple to Mary, Mother, and Queen in Trieste—project by Antonio Guacci and Sergio Musmeci—combine structural expression and symbolism. The building, 40 meters high, employs triangular modules to reference the Trinity, while its massing takes the form of the letter « M » in respect for Mary. Cemetery architecture, another category open to expressive interpretation, also embraced Brutalism in Italy. Notable examples include Leonardo Ricci’s extension to the Jesi Cemetery and Luigi Ciapparella’s monumental addition to the cemetery in Busto Arsizio.
Conte and Perego’s photographic exploration of Italian Brutalism is documented in their book Brutalist Italy: Concrete Architecture from the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea, published by FUEL Design. The duo has previously worked on this, having completed Soviet Asia: Soviet Modernist Architecture in Central Asia, a survey of Brutalism in post-Soviet republics. Other localized studies of the movement have been published in recent years, revealing its diverse expressions globally—from the legacy of Tanzanian modernism to the concrete architecture of Beersheba.
